


aftermath

by w1tch3



Category: Scholomance - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, alternative, i don't know why but i wanted to write it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27663067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w1tch3/pseuds/w1tch3
Summary: After the horrible encounter with the maw-mouth El is shaken enough to tell Orion about what she did.
Relationships: Galadriel "El" & Orion Lake, Galadriel "El"/Orion Lake
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning is all Naomi Novik's, so are the characters. Enjoy!

I just stood there instead, trembling, still leaking the tears that hadn’t stopped, and when a line of snot dripped down my face, warm and sticky, I wanted to vomit; my whole stomach clenched up into a knot. Then I heard a voice yell, “El! Galadriel! Are you down there?” from the stairs, and it set me loose. I put my hands up through the very top of my shield and shoved it open out and down to the ground, wasting another couple seconds of mana to do it that way, so the filth just went into the last draining mess on the floor.

Orion came off the steps and into the hallway, panting and singed, half his hair burnt short on one side, and when he saw me, he stopped and heaved a deep breath like someone who’s been a bit worried because you stayed out too late, and now, seeing you’re fine, is annoyed. “Glad you made it out safe,” he told me pointedly. “It’s all over, by the way.”

I burst into sobs and buried my face in my hands.

Orion had to more or less carry me back to my room. Possibly less given that he couldn’t actually manage my weight the whole way and had to stop and put me down a few times, and I walked for a bit before I stopped and cried some more and he picked me up again in a panic. He worked out somewhere along the way that something had happened other than me running away from a bunch of mals in the reading room, and when he got me to my room, he tried to get me to tell him about it. I suppose he would have believed me, and if he’d believed me, and told other people, wouldn’t that have done it? Probably not. Everyone thought he was stupidly gone on me, after all, and they’d have asked if he saw it, and he hadn’t.

He kept asking me about what had happened, and if I wasn’t so shaken up, part of me still caught on the insides of that horrible monster, I would have realized how panicked he was, how _worried_. After a few minutes of silence, broken only by my intermittent sobs, he asked the first question I knew how to answer.

“Do you want to be alone?” His voice was strong and deliberate, like he had been rehearsing it in his head before letting it out.

“No,” I replied, expecting to sound how I felt, tired, scared, and completely miserable, but it just sounded hollow.

I expected him to be weird, like he so frequently was, to be uncomfortable in my room while I fell apart, but he just made himself at home sitting on my bed. It should have bothered me how normal it felt to have him there, but both my mind and my body were spent, and I fell asleep soon after he took my hand in his.

My throat burned first from the scream, then from the bile rising up in it. I was barely awake when I flung myself from the bed in direction of the void, then I threw up half my breakfast. Orion held my hair back, since almost all of it had fallen from the plait I had done that morning, his hands felt too hot against my clammy neck.

He handed me the jug of water, and I used it to clean my mouth and splash some of it on my face, trying to wash the vomit, the tears and the nightmare that had woken me up. I could still feel the maw-mouth all around me.

I wanted to take a shower, to scrub myself so clean that the sensation would disappear, but I could barely manage to get back on my bed, much less make my way to the bathroom, or find someone to watch my back.

Orion sat by me again, I could tell he wanted to ask, he wanted to understand. He was probably trying to guess what had put me in that state so he could go on and kill it. This made me laugh, a hoarse, humorless laugh that was half sobs. I was hysteric. Wasn’t it one of the signs of shock? I couldn’t remember.

“El, what happened?” He asked again, panic rising in his voice.

And this time I told him.

I told him I had tried to follow him, but the library wouldn’t let me. I told him about seeing the maw-mouth and realizing it was about to kill an entire class of freshmen. I told him about how it felt to be inside of it, terrified and violated and desperate. I told him about the dozens of people around me, always dying, but never dead.

And I told him about the killing spells. How effortlessly they came to me, how I could probably cast a thousand of them a day.

As he listened silently, I could see fear in his eyes for the first time since we had met, and I realized maybe I could have kept that part to myself. I was a sixteen years old girl who had just killed a maw-mouth using a terrible spell that I could cast like a cantrip. Of course he was scared.

I wanted to cry again.

But before my traitorous eyes could produce any more tears, Orion put his arms around me and gave me my first hug in three years.

He wasn’t scared of me, he was scared _for_ me.

“I can’t believe you went after a maw-mouth on your own and came back,” he said, sounding equal parts reproachful and relieved. Which was very hypocritical of him, because trying to take on a maw-mouth alone was something _he_ would do without even blinking.

“You had your hands full,” I weakly tried to joke. I was finally starting to feel better, I could only imagine how my mom would be proud of me for recognizing the healing powers of a hug.

“I would have come for you,” he said simply.

And I believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I know canon says El didn't want to talk about the maw-mouth, but I caught myself thinking how things would have turned out differently if she had told Orion about it. I think it would have been a bonding moment for them, but of course Liu wouldn't have been restored to mana and the whole plot would have gone off the rails. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed it! (please leave kudos and comments, I need the validation because I should be writing a really important paper for college, but I'm writing YA fanfic instead *cries*)


End file.
